Posted on June 26th, 2021
A busy Saturday of fishing was made even busier with a couple of tournaments that were also taking place with the Ocean City Marlin Club Small Boat Tournament and the Fish and Paddle Saltwater Slam. Let’s get to it.
Ocean City Marlin Club Small Boat Tournament Day 1 of 2 Standings. Thanks to Amanda Shick and Dave Messick for the pics!
Brian Roberts has got 70 kayak anglers fishing this year’s Fish and Paddle and there is some good fishing going on. Currently Morgan Mericle leads heaviest fish and heaviest stringer categories and is looking at $4,000 and a trip to Panama. Zack Ditmars is currently looking at about $1,400 for the winner-take-all Calcutta.
Away from tournament action the tuna bite was good in the offshore canyons again today for some. Captain Jo Jo Joachamowski and his crew on the private boat Wiskey Kilo had a great day with several yellowfin tuna and a real nice bigeye.
Lady anglers on the Reel Chaos with Captain Anthony Matarese had a great day and put a hurt on the yellowfin tuna putting a bunch on the dock at Sunset Marina. Thanks to Sunset for the pics!
The crew of the private boat Bar South had a crazy good day on the yellowfin tuna putting a limit on C Dock at Sunset Marina.
Captain Joe Drosey of Rhonda’s Osprey had a good day for his anglers putting them on plenty of tuna steaks for the freezer.
Captain Jason Mumford of Lucky Break had a good day of drifting and found a couple of keeper flounder for his anglers.
Mike Razmus and his crew were fishing out of Mystic Island, NJ today and had a terrific day of flounder fishing. Mike and the crew combined for over 30 fish with keepers of 19.5″, 20″, 21″ and 21″. They caught all of the fish on a combination of Fish in OC Deadly Doubles in chartreuse and pink.
My buddy Curt Presnell had a great first trip of the season when he caught his limit of flounder over ocean structure.
Captain Paul Robertson of the Fishing For Muscular Dystrophy had a decent day with the flounders over ocean structure putting four keepers in the fish box.
Tim Bieleski and his wife Kathy fished the bass grounds today and found the triggerfish stacked up nicely.
Garret Wingate fished Ocean City’s back bay and put a nice “chopper” bluefish and a keeper rockfish in the boat.
Captain Marc Spagnola of Dusk to Dawn Bowfishing has been putting his shooters on the meat both day and night again and the action is good for hound fish, snakeheads, gar and southern and cow nosed rays.
My buddy Danny Winn was at it again today over on the Chesapeake Bay where he and a buddy had a keeper speckled trout and a limit of rockfish.
The ocean going party boat fleet got to enjoy some nice weather today and some very good fishing. Captain Chris Mizurak of the Angler reported good fishing with nice sea bass and some keeper flounder.
Captain Monty Hawkins of the Morning Star enjoyed the first nice Saturday in weeks today…along with some good fishing.
What’s this? First pretty Saturday in, what? Six?Seven weeks?
Nice one too.
Fish counter gals Sarah & MaryKate did the deed on our blocks/pyramids today. Bullseyes all.
They’re part of MRIP’s “For Hire” catch estimates – certainly the best estimates in the “marine recreational information program” (MRIP). While Party/Charter (For-Hire) Are Good: I never expect anything but garbage from MRIP’s Private Boat estimates. They rarely let me down. For private boats MRIP literally offers fishery managers a guess. A bad guess. LOL dumb guesses are not infrequent. Problem: If MRIP’s computer says private boats from Rhode Island caught enough of any regulated species to stretch around the moon and back – then that’s bloody well what happened and Don’t You Dare Argue It!
From the For-Hire side, however—where we tell NOAA what we caught everyday? Sometimes those catch estimates aren’t so bad.
From MRIP’s recreational catch estimates is formed the very heart of fisheries regulation. When estimates run too high, that’s “overfishing” & we pay dearly.
But that argument isn’t for now. Went fishing.. Clients had fun.
First limit (in a time of year when ‘any limit’ should be remarkable) was by Earl Miller of Philly at about noon. We had another limit at twenty after; while Zig, poor fellow, had a bad dose of the ‘counting curse.’ He shot up to 14 keeper sea bass long before anyone else, and got stuck. Even if I did have a laser-guided size definition driven sea bass herding marine pulsometer which I could use to steer keepers away from some anglers while allowing others to catch, I wouldn’t use it on Zig, just Murray. Zig hit that lag all by himself. Made up for it at the scale though. Bagging out third ain’t so bad when you’ve won the pool.
Didn’t play overtime today. Angler Chris had spotted a storm line on his radar. I painted it too with my 72 mile set. Great big long line of rain; from what I could see it stretched from Chesapeake Bay up into DE Bay. sure didn’t move fast, but eastward it came. I pulled the plug on our day just as we hit the full day mark. Then, when I was about ten miles off the beach, the whole line fizzled – poof.
All gone.
Don’t mind a bit, Thank You.
I’ll take a squall free wharfing anytime.
See what tomorrow brings..
Cheers
Monty
